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The Fight Attacks Anaheim’s Chain Reaction

UK punk band The Fight was only two songs into their set at Chain Reaction when front woman K8 became concerned with the communication barrier between her and the audience: ‘Does anyone understand the way we talk?’
Some confused OC kids, who supposedly speak the same language, assumed that they were supposed to clap.
‘I’ll take that as a ‘no’ then,’ K8 said. ‘You guys don’t understand a fucking word probably.’
No K8, we really did not. Not a word. Honestly, I was there and I had no idea that that was what she said. I had to go on the Web site and look at the video that was posted with subtitles.
Before taking the stage, The Fight were not only understandable, but were also a very nice and laid-back group of kids. Recognizing the need for international diplomacy in these rough times of ours, the band was nice enough to take a break from standing around in the parking lot to discuss some of the slang used on their first full-length album ‘Nothing New Since Rock ‘n’ Roll,’ which was released this past November on Repossession Records.
‘Where we come from, it’s a place called the Black Country because it’s got a lot of industry,’ K8 explained. ‘We have a lot of slang there, like ‘yo whoa,’ ‘yo cool,’ ‘yo eh?”
Then K8 said a long string of something that was as far from anything that I would ever identify as English. Lucky for me, even someone in her band had trouble understanding what she said.
‘I live 20 minutes down the road,’ guitarist Scott said. ‘I’m a posh boy. I don’t know what the fuck they’re saying.’
Then everyone in the band immediately spurted out a slang term that they have obviously had to explain to kids outside of the UK before.
‘Safe,’ K8, Scott and drummer Jak all said suddenly.
‘It could mean good,’ Scott said. ‘It could mean hello, it could mean goodbye.’
‘Is it cool, is it safe?’ K8 explained. ‘Safe, like ‘what up?’ Like, ‘eh, safe?”
Without the accent and the slang, these three Brits actually reminded me of every other Southern California punk kid I grew up with, even saying ‘like’ frequently in every sentence, but with that Northern English ‘oi’ sound to it. They seemed to have a similar affinity to this part of the world, as well.
‘The other side of America, like, it gets more like home,’ Jak said.
‘But we really like it out here,’ K8 said. ‘It’s a lot more laid back here in Southern California than England.’
Home for The Fight is Dudly, England, a small town near Birmingham, where the band formed in 2000. The road to success began soon after their formation when K8 gave their demo to one of the roadies for the pop-punk band, New Found Glory. When the CD was given to NFG guitarist Chad Gilbert, he liked what he heard so much that he passed it on to Fat Mike of NOFX. Fat Mike was also impressed and put out their first EP, ‘Home is where the Hate Is,’ on his label, Fat Wreck Chords.
On their follow-up LP ‘Nothing New Since Rock n’ Roll,’ The Fight was lucky enough to work with producer Neil Avron, whose r

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